Wishing you many Epiphanies in 2012

6th of january is epiphany day – the 12th and last day of christmas. The holiday is over and we can focus on the coming year. A good moment to wish you all the best for 2012 and hope that you will have many epiphanies!

What exactly is epiphany, here is a collection:

• EPIPHANY is the sudden realization or comprehension of the (larger) essence or meaning of something.
• PHILOSOPHICAL meaning: having  found the last piece of the puzzle and suddenly seeing the whole picture.
• ARCHIMEDES Eureka! I found it!
• EINSTEIN was struck as a young child by being given a compass, and realizing that some unseen force in space was making it move.
• DARWIN An example of a flash of holistic understanding in a prepared mind was Charles Darwin’s “hunch” (about natural selection) during The Voyage of the Beagle.
• JAMES JOYCE Referring to those times in his life when something became manifest, a deep realization, he would then attempt to write this epiphanic realization in a fragment. Joyce also used epiphany as a literary device within each short story of his collection Dubliners (1914) as his protagonists came to sudden recognitions that changed their view of themselves or their social condition and often sparking a reversal or change of heart.
• In RELIGION it is used when a person realizes their faith or when they are convinced that a event or happening was really caused by a deity or being of their faith.
• WESTERN CHRISTIAN Religion:  The adoration of the magi, represented as kings, having found Jesus by following a star 12 days after christmas.
• HINDUISM epiphany might refer to the realization of Arjuna that Krishna (a God serving as his charioteer in the “Bhagavad Gita”) is indeed representing the universe.
• In ZEN kensho describes the moment, referring to the feeling attendant on realizing the answer to a koan.
• BUDDHISM Buddha finally realizing the nature of the universe, and thus attaining nirvana.
• WILLIAM BURROUGHS is talking about a drug-influenced state, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is at the end of the fork (naked lunch).
• EPIPHANIES is the thirteenth episode of the second season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series.
• EPIPHANY is a web browser for the GNOME graphical computing desktop.
• HIERONYMUS BOSCH painted the adoration of the magi around 1495.
• HOMER SIMPSON has an epiphany, after visiting a strange Inuit shaman, and realizes he has to save the town from Russ Cargill’s plans to destroy Springfield.
• The last page of THE WIRE magazine with surprising sonic stories about music is called EPIPHANIES.
• Interesting: if you search for Epiphanies or Epiphany on TWITTER many people talk about that they (just) had an epiphany, but don’t exactly say what it was.

More info:
read the article on Wikipedia or just try the Twitter search for realtime results on Epiphany.

CREATIVE COMPANION on Twitter: @christofzuern

Many epiphanies in 2011

6th of january is epiphany day – the 12th and last day of christmas. The holiday is over and we can focus on the coming year. A good moment to wish you all the best for 2011 and hope that you will have many epiphanies!

What exactly is epiphany, here is a collection:

• EPIPHANY is the sudden realization or comprehension of the (larger) essence or meaning of something.
• PHILOSOPHICAL meaning: having  found the last piece of the puzzle and suddenly seeing the whole picture.
• ARCHIMEDES Eureka! I found it!
• EINSTEIN was struck as a young child by being given a compass, and realizing that some unseen force in space was making it move.
• DARWIN An example of a flash of holistic understanding in a prepared mind was Charles Darwin’s “hunch” (about natural selection) during The Voyage of the Beagle.
• JAMES JOYCE Referring to those times in his life when something became manifest, a deep realization, he would then attempt to write this epiphanic realization in a fragment. Joyce also used epiphany as a literary device within each short story of his collection Dubliners (1914) as his protagonists came to sudden recognitions that changed their view of themselves or their social condition and often sparking a reversal or change of heart.
• In RELIGION it is used when a person realizes their faith or when they are convinced that a event or happening was really caused by a deity or being of their faith.
• WESTERN CHRISTIAN Religion:  The adoration of the magi, represented as kings, having found Jesus by following a star 12 days after christmas.
• HINDUISM epiphany might refer to the realization of Arjuna that Krishna (a God serving as his charioteer in the “Bhagavad Gita”) is indeed representing the universe.
• In ZEN kensho describes the moment, referring to the feeling attendant on realizing the answer to a koan.
• BUDDHISM Buddha finally realizing the nature of the universe, and thus attaining nirvana.
• WILLIAM BURROUGHS is talking about a drug-influenced state, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is at the end of the fork (naked lunch).
• EPIPHANIES is the thirteenth episode of the second season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series.
• EPIPHANY is a web browser for the GNOME graphical computing desktop.
• HIERONYMUS BOSCH painted the adoration of the magi around 1495.
• HOMER SIMPSON has an epiphany, after visiting a strange Inuit shaman, and realizes he has to save the town from Russ Cargill’s plans to destroy Springfield.
• The last page of THE WIRE magazine with surprising sonic stories about music is called EPIPHANIES.
• Interesting: if you search for Epiphanies or Epiphany on TWITTER many people talk about that they (just) had an epiphany, but don’t exactly say what it was.

More info:
read the article on Wikipedia or just try the Twitter search for realtime results on Epiphany.

CREATIVE COMPANION on Twitter: @christofzuern

Music thinking is the radical little brother of design thinking

When talking about services and service design I am convinced that music thinking can add an extra layer to the discussion of what design thinking means and especially how we can bring it to life in branding, communication and design.

“Music thinking is the radical little brother of design thinking”
Christof Zürn

When thinking about design there is the assumption, that at the very end after lot’s of prototyping, testing, etc. there is a final product, that maybe can get some updates later but is ‘ready to use’. When thinking about music (classical, jazz, pop) at the very end there will be a piece of work that has to be performed before the crowd. And after the performance what remains is the recall of an experience. If it is good you want it again, buy a CD, T-shirt or spread the word. If it is bad maybe you will ‘boo’, just turn away or tell it to your friends.
For me music thinking reflects the dynamics of daily business, working together with different experts, have to perform every day on a high expectation level in different performance venues for a changing audience. Music thinking also knows ‘radical change’ in style, technical innovation and behaviour of the crowd, customer, consumer, user, downloader. Music thinking is the behavioural side of design thinking:

In the project approach that I am using for CREATIVE COMPANION, I am thinking about the project approach more as a dance, or dance steps. There is a certain order, there is a certain style, in this case, it is a Tango. You don’t dance the tango alone you do it together and you have to rehearse, ‘prototype’ and iterate many times the dance steps together to make it a real experience.

Download the
CREATIVE-COMPANION factsheet and project approach (PDF)

How gangs, teams, couples, collaborators are able to form productive working alliances.

There is an interesting concept about complicity by philosopher and conductor of the Institute of Theory in Zürich Gesa Ziemer. She talks about her ‘theory of complicity’, or to put it in other words: how gangs, teams, couples, collaborators are able to form productive working alliances.

She presents 18 rules of complicity in a short video (german: Komplizenschaft): like ‘creativity through lust’, ‘accomplices are never alone’, ‘they communicatie in different ways’, ‘they invent their own laws and regulations’, ‘accomplices are tacticians and not strategistst’, etc.
See the video (mostly in german): http://dictionaryofwar.org/concepts/Komplizenschaft
Here is a link to an english paper (PDF): http://www.prognosen-ueber-bewegungen.de/files/128/file/ziemer-abstract-en.pdf

As creative companion I embrace the concept of complicity very much because it is based on observations and research found in the area of the arts – especially the performing arts like dance and music.